Overview: Most web sites will have a "links" page, which is usually a collection of related links to other sites in the same field.  In the days before search engines, this was one of the key ways that surfers would navigate the web - once you had found one site of interest to you it was logical that you would want to find other sites in the same genre.

Search engines changed the scenario, and with the emergence of Altavista and Google the average web surfer found that link pages were not really that important anymore and they could better find information from a search engine.  The fact remains though, that linking is still one of the most important elements in driving traffic to your website - and that traffic will be more likely to come from a search engine than the site that is linking to you.  Confused? Read on...

What IS a recipricol Link?

Simply put, a recipricol link is when you link to a site, and they link back to you.  So your site www.x2cms.com links to another site www.x2cms.co.uk.  In return, www.x2cms.co.uk links back to www.x2cms.com.  Thats all there is to it.

Why are they important?

Recipricol links are a huge factor in driving traffic to your site. A good link to your site from another site that is very popular will likely drive traffic to you.  If the site is in the same genre, there is a greater chance that traffic will follow links from that site to your site of course.

More importantly, the search engines use links in a number of ways - and simply put - the more links you have to your site, the higher your site will rank in the search engines.

The Google Factor

One of the ways Google decides how high your site should rank in it's index is based on the number of incoming links to your website.  So for example, amazon.com may have 200,000 links from other websites, while your own site about selling books may only have 20.  Google makes a snap decision that amazon.com is a far more important site than yours and ranks it much higher in the index.

Google also places importance on the anchor text used to make the link.  Anchor text is the text that you click in a given link, so for example -

Website Builder and Website Building

www.x2cms.com

Both the above examples link to the same website.  The anchor text for the first example is "website builder and website building". Google and other engines make a note of this anchor text, and will rank your site higher for those terms used in searches on their engines. So if all your links contain relevant anchor text that surfers might search on, you will rank higher for those terms. As an example, x2cms links vary from "website builder" to "easy website builder" to "professional website building" - these are common searches input by surfers looking for our type of product.

Ever wondered why a site will rank high in Google for a term that doesn't even appear on the page? Or why a flash intro will rank highly for a 2 word phrase when that phrase doenst appear on the page? Well, this is why.  Google takes the anchor text and will automatically rank it for the phrase that appears in the anchor text.

Relevancy

Search engines also rank sites higher if the pages their links come from are relevant to the site itself.  So if you run a casino, lots of links from travel related sites will not help your ranking much.  Lots of sites from other casinos on the other hand, will help you a great deal.  Google and other engines have complicated systems for determining what your website is actually about, as anyone who uses adsense (their onsite advertising tool) will know.

Getting Links

There is no real mystery to this, it's all about hard work.  The best way is simply to search out other websites in your own field and simply ask them if they would like to exchange links with you.  A simple email like this is usually best -

Dear Webmaster,

I have today visited your site and would like to exchange links with you.  I have already put a link to your site on one of our pages located here - http://mydomain.com/whereIputyourlink.html.

I would be grateful if you would link back to me with the following html -

<a href="http://www.x2cms.com">Website builder</a> - easy to use website building tool

Many Thanks

Webmaster, x2cms.com

In the above example, you have made is very easy for the other webmaster to link to you.  You have already linked to his site (always a good idea) and not only that you have given him the exact html code to put on his site - all he/she has to do it copy and paste it on to the relevant page.

Keep a note of all those that you send, in a week or so check their pages - if they havent linked to you send a reminder email, in another week if there still isnt any link I would delete your link to them.  Which brings us on to non-recipricol.

Non Recipricol Links (NRs)

These are links that link to you, and you don't link back to them.  Search engines see these as more important than recipricol links, as recipricols are deemed to be an exchange.  NR's occur naturally on the web, and can be seen as more important as that webmaster has chosen to link to you without anything in return.  There is no real method for gainaing these, if your site is good and others like it you will develop NRs naturally.

Speeding up the process

There are a number of different companies that aim to help you in creating links.  We have reviewed them all, and the only one we recommend is http://www.gotop.com/ - which automates the process by letting you choose the sites you want to link with.  The system then sends out an automated email which is in 4 stages, once all 4 are complete you have a successful recipricol link.  It goes without saying that x2cms highly recommend this product, both for its ease if use and the excellent clients they have in their database to link to.

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